l dog stood on the threshold, and barked
uneasily when the bell rang in the Ursulines' Chapel, where the nuns
were at matins.

It was Sunday, and a soft tranquillity blest the cool air in which the
young girl bathed her troubled spirit. A faint anticipative homesickness
mingled now with her nightlong anxiety,--a pity for herself that on the
morrow she must leave those pretty sights, which had become so dear to
her that she could not but feel herself native among them. She must go
back to Eriecreek, which was not a walled city, and had not a stone
building, much less a cathedral or convent, within its borders; and
though she dearly loved those under her uncle's roof there, yet she had
to own that, beyond that shelter, there was little in Eriecreek to touch
the heart or take the fancy; that the village was ugly, and the village
people mortally dull, narrow, and uncongenial. Why was not her lot cast
somewhere else? Why should she not see more of the world that she had
found so fair, and which all her aspirations had fitted her to enjoy?
Quebec had been to her a rapture of beautiful antiquity; but Europe, but
London, Venice, Rome, those infinitely older and more storied cities of
which she had lately talked so much with Mr. Arbuton,--why should she
not see them?

Here, for the guilty space of a heat-lightning flash, Kitty wickedly
entertained the thought of marrying Mr. Arbuton for the sake of a bridal
trip to Europe, and bade love and the fitness of things and the
incompatibility of Boston and Eriecreek traditions take care of
themselves. But then she blushed for her meanness, and tried to atone
for it as she could by meditating the praise of Mr. Arbuton. She felt
remorse for having, as he had proved yesterday, undervalued and
misunderstood him; and she was willing now to think him even more
magnanimous than his generous words and conduct showed him. It would be
a base return for his patience to accept him from a worldly ambition; a
man of his noble spirit merited the best that love could give. But she
respected him; at last she respected him fully and entirely, and she
could tell him that at any rate.

The words in which he had yesterday protested his love for her repeated
themselves constantly in her revery. If he should speak them again after
he had seen her in Boston, in the light by which she was anxious to be
tested,--she did not know what she should say.

XIII.

ORDEAL.

They had not planned to go an